occupation of France. Over the course of the Nazi occupation, approximately 75,000 people were executed in the region of Paris. Many French intellectuals died during this period, such as Robert Desnos, Otto Freundlich and Max Jacob. Other artists managed to escape France to reach other countries, such as Marc Chagall, Marcel Duchamp, Fernand Léger, Alberto Giacometti and Max Ernst. In the autumn of 1944, Picasso was reported to have stated, "I did not paint the war, because I am not one of those artists who go looking for a subject like a photographer, but there is no doubt that the war is there in the pictures which I painted then." Description The Charnel House is a sombre painting of a jumble of figures beneath a dining room table. It represents a murdered family that appears similar to the piles of bodies discovered in Nazi concentration camps at the point of their liberation. Picasso stated that the work was a response to the first photographs that were taken in the concentration camps. The black and white palette reflects the war photographs that inspired the painting. Picasso created the image between 1944 and 1945, using oil and charcoal on canvas. The painting measures 199.8 cm x 250.1 cm. Echoing the composition of Guernica, Picasso used Expressionist forms to convey the tortured images of the figures, using funereal shades of gray, white and black. The image depicts the contorted bodies of a man, woman and child, who are sprawled on the floor beneath a table that holds eating utensils. Soon after its completion, the work was described by Alfred H. Barr Jr., as "a Pieta without grief, an entombment without mourners, a requiem without pomp." While creating the painting, Picasso is known to have made changes to the composition, evidenced by photographs taken in 1945 that documented the progress of the work. These changes included the evolving facial expressions of the figures. Picasso outlined the structure of the composition, before applying charcoal to the picture. The final image is incomplete, showing exposed areas of canvas, however Picasso was satisfied with it and donated it to the National Association of Veterans of the Resistance in 1946. Later that year he asked for it to be returned to make alterations to the painting. He then kept it in his possession until 1954, when it was sold to an American collector. The use of a palette